Alma couldn’t sleep.
This wasn’t unusual. She hadn’t slept well since she moved to Four Points.
At first, she had blamed the new house, which was actually a very old, creaky-squeaky house. Then she had blamed her new bed, which her parents had bought her, along with a new desk and a new bookshelf, to try to trick her into being excited about the move. The bed was bigger than her old one and made of white wood and really very lovely. But it wasn’t her old bed.
And even though her collection of Old Haven rocks was on the shelf of her new bookcase and her collection of Old Haven feathers was pinned to a board above her new desk and her collection of Old Haven dried flowers was pressed between the pages of her books as always, this still wasn’t her old room. This wasn’t her home. And she was sure that this was what was keeping her awake every night.
It didn’t help, of course, that all night every night, Alma’s mind spun through thought after thought, like speed-reading a thousand fear-filled books.
You live in Four Points, her mind said. You don’t live in Old Haven anymore.
You don’t have any friends, her mind said. Your parents are disappointed in you. And James is gone.
You are going to have another episode, her mind said. You’re never going to stop having episodes.
And there’s nothing you can do about any of it. There’s nothing to be done.
Usually, Alma lay and listened to these thoughts, listened as she drifted fitfully in and out of sleep, listened over and over and over.
But tonight, Alma was not in the mood to listen.
“Be quiet,” she said to her thoughts, and she got out of bed. She had promised the ShopKeeper that she would use the quintescope, and she was going to do it. Right now.
When they first moved into the house, both of Alma’s parents had talked to her about never, ever going onto the flat roof outside her new bedroom window, because when they had first moved, climbing onto the roof was exactly the kind of thing Alma would have liked to do.
But in the last three months, she had not so much as unlatched her window.
Now she did. She lifted the frame upward as slowly as she could, as smoothly as she could. There was a grating shriek about halfway up, but when she paused and listened, everything was quiet.
She pushed the quintescope case out onto the roof. Then she followed it, quickly, before she could think twice, before she could stop herself.
Out on the roof, the wind caught her by surprise. It also woke her up, the way it had earlier as she walked to the Fifth Point alone. She opened the case and set about putting the quintescope together.
First, there was a tripod, with three shiny legs that did not want to stay upright. Then there were the bigger cones of the quintescope that extended, and the eyepiece that fit on, but how she did not know. She spun knobs, twisted joints, pulled, and pressed.
But she couldn’t do it.
She felt the just-a-little-bit of Alma-ness inside her dim.
She couldn’t do it.
Even in the cold air, Alma’s face felt hot, flushed. The thoughts started back up again. Why had she thought the quintescope was for her? James was the smart one, not her. She couldn’t join an Astronomy Club full of strangers anyway. She would almost certainly have an episode. And then what? Had she really imagined that things would change because she found a flyer?
She couldn’t put the quintescope together. She couldn’t even do that much. She couldn’t do anything.
Now the wind wasn’t waking her up. Now the wind seemed to blow straight through her. Now the wind was frozen fingers that reached up the sleeves of her nightgown and into her collar and held on tight, squeezing her down, shrinking her small as the world grew large and howled around her, howled through the blackness that surrounded her on the roof.
But above her, there were stars.
And inside, on her nightstand, on the flyer, there were stars.
You are made of elements and quintessence.
Everything that had happened today—
“It has to mean something,” Alma whispered.
She sat back on her heels and picked up the eyepiece from the roof. She looked through it, up at the sky. Gold light shone back at her, distant but near, strange but familiar.
Then she turned the eyepiece around and held it in front of herself. If the stars were looking down, they would see her. They would see her tall and strong and brave.
“And bright too,” she said, thinking of what the ShopKeeper had said when he looked at her through his jeweler’s glasses. “And growing brighter. I am still Alma.”
She started putting the quintescope together again.
It took time. It took twisting and turning and fumbling and the tripod collapsing on itself at least a dozen more times.
But finally the quintescope was assembled.
She had done it, she had done it.
It was time to see the stars.